


For I am fearfully and wonderfully made

by anactoriatalksback



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale is "just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing" (Good Omens), Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), Blow Jobs, Crowley Has a Praise Kink (Good Omens), Crowley Submits to the Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known (Good Omens), Crowley has such a praise kink it hurts, Gentle Dom Aziraphale (Good Omens), M/M, Porn with Feelings, Post-Apocalypse, Praise Kink, Rimming, Sex in the Bookshop (Good Omens), Sex with Snake Form Crowley (Good Omens), Snake Crowley (Good Omens), White-hot take I know I amaze myself sometimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:54:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23620405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoriatalksback/pseuds/anactoriatalksback
Summary: In which Aziraphale teaches Crowley to take a compliment: or, Crowley is torn between pleasure and pain when Aziraphale praises him.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 128
Kudos: 504





	1. Chapter 1

“‘Nice’ is a four-letter word.”

So says Crowley, and he earnestly believes it.

‘Nice’ is a simpering, neutered word [1]. ‘Nice’ is a vicar at a church fête, nose dripping into cucumber sandwiches, eyes red with hay-fever. ‘Nice’ is a boy lying in his bedroom listening to Morrissey and crying because the pretty barista won’t sleep with him even after he asked her how her day was [2]. Or at least ‘nice’ is how the boy would describe himself.

‘Nice’ is a book of Unusual Words given to you for your birthday by an acquaintance trying – and failing – to betray the fact that they know literally nothing about you but can’t show up empty-handed to the birthday party [3].

‘Nice’ is a mere hairsbreadth away from ‘kind’, which is a gnat’s blink away from ‘good’ which is a whisper away from ‘forgivable’ which is no distance at all from ‘forgiv _en_ ’.

‘Nice’ is a gateway to ‘good’. Or, more importantly, to ‘good enough’. Good enough for Upstairs, which makes no matter at all. Crowley’s never thought of himself as an exile. Not from Upstairs, and not from Downstairs. Slinking along the lush green of the Garden, whispering in Eve’s pretty ear, trying on and discarding genders and fashions [4] with every decade, chariots and landaulets and horseless carriages – it’s a good life, a varied life. Humanity, with its greed and ambition and seething pettiness and imaginative cruelty and astonishing generosity, its abundance and its limitation – people keep him interested. Which is more than the sermonising of Upstairs, or the infinite loop of boils-and-plague-and-flaying of Downstairs, ever managed.

So no, good enough for Upstairs is no prize at all, and too good for Downstairs no threat.

Good enough, on the other hand, for one particular ang – for one particular enti – for one particular …

For one particular.

One bright, particular …

Good enough for one.

One particular one.

That? Well, that? That might be … Crowley might be brought to consider it.

A gateway to ‘good enough’, then. Except a gateway is not a sure thing.

Which opens up a whole twisting corkscrewing world, a whole ball of yarn after the cat’s taken an interest, a promiscuously branching, enthusiastically slutty tree, of – possibilities. Options. Ways back. Ways forward. Ways up. Ways out. Ways … just. Ways.

And possibilities are options. And where there’s an option there’s a responsibility. There’s pressure. Where there’s an option there’s a choice to be made. Where there are choices there are right choices, and more to the point there are _wrong_ choices.

And each wrong choice is a direct, do-not-pass-Go, one-way ticket to ‘Thank you for playing’, to ‘Nope’, to ‘Dream On’, to ‘Not, In Fact, Good Enough’.

All in all, as Crowley sees it, ‘Nice’ is not a very nice word at all.

So it is, perhaps, hardly surprising that when the fatal phrase begins to tremble on Aziraphale’s lips, in the bright confiding tone of a _compliment_ , no less – well, it’s hardly surprising that Crowley takes immediate action.

The action being to lift Aziraphale by the lapels [5] and pin him to a wall.

While Crowley makes his feelings on the epithet very clear.

While getting very close.

Nice and close. As it were.

To make sure that Aziraphale understands, of course.

And Aziraphale … seems to?

Or he doesn’t.

Crowley admits he can’t quite get a read on Aziraphale in that moment.

The angel seems to be paying attention, anyway. He’s certainly watching Crowley’s mouth _very_ closely.

He doesn’t seem frightened, or put out. And _something’s_ certainly made him look _extremely_ thoughtful.

So presumably he’s understood?

He doesn’t try to compliment Crowley again, anyway. Not for a while.

So that’s that, thinks Crowley. Aziraphale listened to him, and will not compliment him again.

That’s … good.

It’s good to be attended to.

It’s good to have one’s wishes respected and one’s boundaries honoured.

Yes. Good.

That’s how Crowley feels about that. Good.

Great, even.

Terrific, actually.

Glad that’s sorted.

Not that Crowley has very much time to think about compliments in the next few rather exciting days, what with an Armageddon to prevent and eternal torments to evade and whatnot. He barely even has time to register Aziraphale’s discorporation and mourn his passing [6] before he is presented with the angel in a dress and the viscerally horrible sight of the Bentley in flames.

And then – well – then he is Aziraphale and Aziraphale is him and it transpires that Crowley is going to have rather a lot of time to process _that_ experience.

All the time he needs.

All the time in the world, as it happens.

Except perhaps not.

Because, _as it happens_ , after they’ve pulled the whole thing off, after dinner at the Ritz, after the consumption of prodigious quantities of alcohol at Aziraphale’s bookshop, Aziraphale sits up and looks, with the owlish fixity of the extremely drunk, at Crowley. And says ‘We – you and me – we need. Sober. Sober up.’

‘Why?’ says Crowley, who did, after all, get chucked out of Upstairs for asking too many questions, and sees no need to break the habit of a lifetime.

Aziraphale gives him a look of bleary, but infinite, patience. ‘Because.’

‘But why - ’

‘Please,’ says Aziraphale.

And that – well, that’s always been enough.

Crowley sighs and shuts his eyes. In a moment he opens them, stone-cold sober but none too pleased about it, and opens his mouth to ask what in Hell’s name Aziraphale thinks he’s playing at –

When all of a sudden, he has a lapful of angel.

‘What - ’ says Crowley [7].

Aziraphale is staring at Crowley. ‘You’re sober, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, what - ’

‘And,’ says Aziraphale, hands on the chair-back, bracketing Crowley, ‘in full possession of your faculties?’

About this, Crowley is less certain. Aziraphale’s weight is on Crowley’s knees, and he is very warm and he smells of a nice pomade and a nice tawny port and something else – ozone, sharp and pure and clear – and Crowley’s tongue doesn’t seem to be working and that may well be the least of his problems.

‘Take off your glasses,’ says Aziraphale. He’s breathing rather hard.

Crowley fumbles for his sunglasses and snatches them off.

‘I want,’ says Aziraphale, and he passes his tongue over his lips. Crowley’s eyes follow the movement with pained narrowness. ‘May I – Crowley, would you object if I kissed you?’

And Crowley is even less convinced now of any control he might ever had had of any faculties he ever possessed.

‘Ngk,’ he says. Rather articulately, he thinks, given the circumstances.

Aziraphale’s eyes widen. ‘I don’t – Crowley, should I not - ’

And it looks – it really, really looks – as though Aziraphale is planning to scramble off his lap, off and away, so Crowley digs his nails into Aziraphale’s thigh – he’ll apologise later for the pained gasp the other emits – and yanks him back with a hand to his bowtie.

‘Yes,’ he says, and then plays back the form of Aziraphale’s question. ‘No! I mean no.’ Aziraphale looks uncertain still, so Crowley elaborates. ‘No objection.’ He clears his throat. ‘Kiss,’ he says, to make himself clear. ‘You can. Kissss me.’

And so – brightening until it almost hurts Crowley to look at him – Aziraphale does.

And does again, licking inside Crowley’s mouth.

And does again, wriggling voluptuously in Crowley’s lap.

And does again, hand sliding in Crowley’s hair.

And does again, glowing delightedly at Crowley’s high moans.

And does again, whispering hungry and hot against Crowley’s skin.

Crowley doesn’t hear what he’s saying at first. His head’s thrown back, and he’s panting ‘Yes, yes, yesss’ to anything, anything Aziraphale wants, anything he demands with lips and teeth and tongue and soft fingers.

And then Aziraphale lifts his head and stares deep into Crowley’s eyes and sighs ‘Lovely.’

And Crowley’s head snaps up.

Lovely, he thinks, is a mere nothing away from beautiful, and beauty is truth, truth beauty, that’s what that snivelling weed Keats said, Aziraphale wept when the little fucker died, beauty is truth, truth beauty, and truth is good, always, stands to reason, lovely is beautiful is truth is good …

Is good enough?

Enough?

 _Is_ good enough?

 _Can be_ good enough?

May not be good enough?

May _never_ be good enough?

He’s on his feet before he knows it, heart hammering, hand clasped to his chest, Aziraphale dumped unceremoniously on the floor.

‘Crowley?’

‘I have to - ’ says Crowley, because he’s quaking and terrified and violently and humiliatingly hard. He looks down at his angel and swallows. ‘I have to - ’

And while he’s pondering whether to turn into a snake, poof out of the shop or just run away, he feels a hand close around his wrist.

‘Crowley,’ says Aziraphale. ‘Sit.’

‘I have to - ’ begins Crowley, and the rest of his sentence must be lost to posterity because Aziraphale, with gentle but irresistible pressure, pulls Crowley down so that he’s sitting opposite him.

‘Now,’ says Aziraphale, ‘I am going to kiss you again, unless you object.’

Crowley lets out a long breath. Kissing, he thinks, kissing is safe, Aziraphale’s mouth occupied by kissing cannot turn itself to speaking.

He nods.

Aziraphale leans in and places the gentlest, most chaste of kisses to Crowley’s lips.

When he pulls away, Crowley hooks a hand around Aziraphale’s braces and tugs him back in. Laughing softly, Aziraphale obliges.

At some point, between kisses eight and eight hundred, Aziraphale has resumed his position in Crowley’s lap. Crowley has one hand up under Aziraphale’s shirt, and his own shirt is lost forever to one of the bookshop’s farthest and dustiest corners. Aziraphale is grinding gently against Crowley. His lower lip is between Aziraphale’s teeth and one of his angel’s hands is pressing, warm and firm and seeking, against his chest.

Aziraphale lets Crowley’s lip go and ducks his head down, curls tickling Crowley’s cheek. He presses kisses to Crowley’s throat, down to his collarbone, and then takes Crowley’s nipple between his teeth.

‘Hnnnng,’ says Crowley, hips jerking up and brushing against Aziraphale’s.

His eyes slam open – oh, they’d shut, when had they shut?

‘You’re wet,’ he breathes, and Aziraphale is, he is, his cunt’s soaked through his tweed, he must be –

‘Oh,’ says Aziraphale, a fetching bloom of pink on his cheek, ‘yes. That – that does rather tend to happen.’

‘Tend to happen?’ Crowley sits up, when, with whom, how many –

‘With _you_ ,’ says Aziraphale, tugging his chin so he can look into Crowley’s eyes. ‘Every time you had me in a – well, a tizzy, I suppose.’

‘A tizzy?,’ says Crowley, finding that he’s grinning and not especially caring. ‘What sssort of tizzy?’

Aziraphale sniffs. ‘Every time you were being particularly provoking,’ he says, and looks at Crowley, ‘which, as you can imagine, was _extremely_ frequent.’

‘Provoking?,’ says Crowley, letting his other hand wander down to one smooth plump buttock. ‘What did I _provoke_ you to do, angel?’

‘Ohhhh,’ says Aziraphale, pressing back into the touch, ‘oh, that’s - ’

‘What else?,’ says Crowley, letting himself squeeze and knead. ‘What _other_ … tizzies?’

‘When you were,’ pants Aziraphale, rolling his hips, ‘when you were _wicked_ , oh, I wanted - ’

‘Wicked?’ oh, Crowley feels drunk on this, on Aziraphale, squirming over him, warm beneath his hands, on these whispered half-confessions reaching out to him over six thousand barren years, comforting him with their impossible careless generosity.

‘Wicked,’ says Aziraphale. ‘The Bastille, do you remember?’

As if Crowley could forget. As if he’s ever forgotten his angel, resplendent and absurd, ivory silk and lace and diamond buckles a-twinkle in the gloom of his dungeon.

‘Oh, good _Lord_ ,’ Aziraphale had said, his eyes sweeping up and down before he turned away. And then he’d turned back as though to assure himself that he hadn’t been mistaken.

‘Was I _wicked_ then, angel?,’ says Crowley, and oh, he didn’t know his voice could sound like that. He sounds – oh, not wicked, ridiculous word, but … sure of himself. Deeply and bottomlessly sure.

Aziraphale rears up and kisses Crowley in response, a wet hot hungry thing that has them panting deliriously into each other’s mouths. ‘I wept,’ says Aziraphale, ‘I wanted you so much I cried.’

Crowley thinks of his own nights, hand down his own breeches or up his own skirt, having at himself until he was wrung out and his lips bitten through, and drags Aziraphale back in for another kiss.

‘When else?,’ says Crowley, after they let each other go.

Aziraphale smiles at him. ‘The church,’ he says, brushing a strand of hair off Crowley’s forehead. ‘When you rescued the books.’

Crowley frowns. ‘Was I – how was I wicked then?’

‘You weren’t,’ says Aziraphale, ‘not at all. Quite the opposite.’

He wriggles closer, hips moving in circles against Crowley’s groin. Crowley lets his head fall back as he sucks in air, and Aziraphale says dreamily: ‘It was the single most thoughtful thing anyone’s ever done for me.’

And Crowley jolts, again, a spasm of want and panic so total it blinds him.

He bucks – away, he thinks, away away _away_ – only to find that Aziraphale’s thighs have clamped around him.

‘Crowley,’ says Aziraphale’s voice – gentle but imperative – ‘come back to me, my dear.’

Chest heaving, Crowley comes back to find Aziraphale’s lips against his forehead, one hand stroking his arm.

‘Now,’ says Aziraphale, ‘let’s reflect on this, shall we?’

Crowley stares miserably up at him. _Don’t ask me_ , he thinks, _I don’t have an answer for you, I can’t explain, there’s too much there, if I begin I’ll remind you of why you shouldn’t, you out of everyone, I can’t -_

Aziraphale says ‘I didn’t call you nice.’ As Crowley writhes beneath him, he continues ‘Yes, I did notice that word rather struck a nerve, my dear.’

Crowley swallows. Aziraphale considers him and then says ‘so if I were to call you kind - ’

Crowley shudders, mouth twisting, cock twitching in his trousers. Aziraphale says ‘ _Fas_ cinating.’

And he sounds like he means it, too. Crowley’s reminded of the first time – Babylon, was it? – that Aziraphale saw a street performer do a magic trick. Something pitiful – three cups, one coin, something like that. Crowley was embarrassed for the performer, her audience, and basically every single-celled organism that had made the leap to sentience.

But Aziraphale had watched, entranced, lips parted, eyes glistening, hands clasped loosely. Crowley had looked at him and ached with exasperation and bemusement and simple affection. Even harder than wanting a hereditary enemy composed entirely of ethereal and disinterested love, is realising that you _like_ a hereditary enemy composed entirely of ethereal and disinterested love, an enemy by turns, and unpredictably, impossible and ludicrously easy to impress.

Aziraphale is looking at him like that now. His eyes are shining with the zeal of a lepidopterist who thinks she’s found a new species of butterfly.

‘You react rather … strongly … when I praise you,’ he says.

Crowley nodded. No point denying it.

‘But you don’t … dislike … it,’ says Aziraphale.

Crowley opens his mouth to object, but Aziraphale grinds meaningfully down and he finds the breath leaving his mouth on a whimper instead. It’s true – Crowley can hardly claim revulsion when he’s so significantly and tellingly hard.

Crowley swallows. He hears his throat click drily. Finally he says ‘if you could – just – not say those things, angel, we’d be – I’m fine without, you’ve seen, we don’t have to - ’

‘No,’ says Aziraphale.

Crowley blinks. There is in Aziraphale’s gentle tone a sense of implacability, of a stone face without a single crack.

‘No,’ says Aziraphale, ‘no, I don’t think so, my darling.’

‘You see,’ he continues, sitting back a little so Crowley can look into his eyes, ‘I’ve waited – well, rather a long time for this, my dear.’

Crowley stares at him. He says ‘ _You’ve_ waited a long time?’

Aziraphale nods. ‘Six thousand years,’ he says, and raises his voice over Crowley’s sputter. ‘Six thousand years of, of looking, at you, but over my shoulder too, you know, of making lists of the things I wanted to do to you, my darling, of the things I wanted you to do to me - ’

‘Ngk,’ says Crowley.

‘Of collecting verse and songs and novels and plays.’ Aziraphale takes a deep breath and rests his forehead against Crowley’s. ‘I have a bookshop,’ he says, ‘a bookshop full of all the words I’ve been waiting to say to you. All the words, in every language I could find.’

He lifts his head to look at Crowley. ‘And I intend to say them all.’

[1] In this context, that is. In the context of Agnes Nutter, ‘nice’ is a gleaming scalpel, a shark’s smile.

Back

[2] He didn’t listen to her answer, but then nobody told him that was part of the requirement.

Back

[3] To which they only received an invitation because you were discussing the arrangements for it in their hearing and felt awkward about leaving them outa.

a And which they only accepted because they felt weird about turning down an invitation so enthusiastically tenderedb.

b The enthusiasm, of course, wallpapering over a desperate internal plea for the acquaintance to politely refusec.

c Which the acquaintance now, belatedly, and to their dawning horror, realises was an option.

Back

[4] Which comes, really, to the same thing.

Back

[5] Or rather, be permitted to lift Aziraphale by the lapels. Crowley’s under no illusions about how far he’d expect to get with the angel if he were unwillinga.

a Not that Crowley’s given the matter any thought at allb.

b At allc.

c No, reallyd.

d Honeste.

e Word of a demon.

Back

[6] In retrospect, Crowley _could_ have frozen time to get a proper mourn on. Crowley is continually reminded, after the fact, of the considerable powers that he _could_ , in theory, use to immediately and painlessly resolve the vast majority of the thousand natural shocks his flesh is heir toa. Because the many and various powers that he can lay claim to do not include, and have never included, a functioning, let alone reliable, memory.

a After he made _Hamlet_ a hit, Crowley took quite an interest in the playb.

b And – a little to Crowley’s embarrassmentc – Richard Burbage took quite an interest in _him_.

c And Aziraphale’s discomfitured.

d On one particularly vexatious evening when Burbage had dragged Crowley up to the first row in the groundlings and insisted on directing at least three soliloquies to him with frankly unbecoming flirtatiousness, given the subject matter, Aziraphale almost cheered when Hamlet was pricked by Laertes. Indeed, he was quite unable to really, truly mourn Hamlet’s passing until Betterton took on the role.

Back

[7] Who did, after all, get chucked out of Upstairs for asking too many questions, and sees no need to break the habit of a lifetime.

Back


	2. Chapter 2

Crowley is a little nervous about what his angel has in store for him. Aziraphale kisses him to sleep afterwards and doesn’t utter a solitary word of praise the next morning, but Crowley is not reassured. There is a gleam in Aziraphale’s eye that Crowley – well, he doesn’t dislike it, because he is physically incapable of disliking anything about Aziraphale, but he certainly doesn’t trust it.

The angel is up to something, and Crowley – well, traditionally his role has been the deviser of wiles and stratagems to be thwarted (the incipient thwartee, as it were) – but he thinks he can grasp the general principles of thwarting.

If he only knew what, exactly, he is meant to be thwarting.

Aziraphale has the _Annals_ of Tacitus open when he next checks in on him. He beams when he sees Crowley, who grins back.

‘This book,’ he says, patting it, ‘has some _wonderful_ advice.’

‘Roman history?’, says Crowley, a little dubiously. He never cared for that period overmuch. Tedious monumental architecture, uninventive torture[](f2pr1)[1], an offputting culinary obsession with dormice and – in Crowley’s case – epic Bad Hair Millennium[](f2pr2)[2]. And the Babylonians had better orgies, frankly[](f2pr3)[3].

‘Among other things,’ says Aziraphale. He peers at Crowley over his glasses.

Crowley mirrors the gesture. ‘What other things?’

‘Military strategy,’ says Aziraphale. ‘Training. Getting fighting forces fighting-fit.’

‘Right,’ says Crowley, feeling a little out of his depth. Neither he nor Aziraphale have ever shown much of an inclination for training, or getting their present vessels anything like “fighting-fit”. He would have hazarded quite large sums of money on Aziraphale specifically being deeply indifferent to any of the words in the previous sentence. Aziraphale’s corporation, to Crowley, suggests an inviting softness, like a high-backed Chesterfield in the Athenaeum, or Boodle’s, or anywhere else redolent of leather-bound first editions, really good brandy, distressing boiled puddings, and silver-haired Old Etonians who sound like they should be narrating Test Match cricket[](f2pr4)[4].

Which is not to say that Aziraphale’s feeble. Far from it. Crowley remembers the flaming sword. He remembers the flashing arc it made as it rent the air in his angel’s hand. He remembers the relaxed, knees-bent, feet-at-near-right-angles stance Aziraphale snapped naturally into. He remembers him rotating his neck, and his little sigh of satisfaction as his wings materialised.

He remembers. Quite vividly, in fact. He returns, at deeply inopportune moments, to the memory. Multiple times.

So all in all, Crowley’s not quite sure what need Aziraphale has for training.

And training for what, exactly?

He asks this, a little nervously, and Aziraphale smiles at him. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I was thinking of our little conundrum.’

Ah. Crowley should have known it was too good to last. ‘Angel,’ he begins, with the clenched-teeth doggedness of one girding his loins for a battle he’s already lost.

‘Do come here, dear boy.’

Crowley sighs and makes his way over to Aziraphale, who takes his wrist and urges him gently down, and further down until Crowley perches on one of his knees.

‘Better,’ says Aziraphale, ‘but I think we can be more comfortable.’

And he picks up Crowley’s legs and slings them over the arm of his chair, gently pulling and rearranging Crowley until he’s draped over him to his liking.

Crowley suffers himself to be moved and disposed, finally blinking up at Aziraphale indulgently through his glasses.

‘Are you finished, angel?’

Aziraphale nods and gathers Crowley a little closer to him. ‘Isn’t this better?’

Crowley will admit his current position has its benefits. Aziraphale, as previously remarked, is very soft. He’s wearing a linen jacket today with a silk waistcoat, both of which are pleasantly cool under Crowley’s cheek. Even the fob of his pocket-watch is a chill, gently-ticking weight against Crowley’s ribs. Beneath is abundance, an ample pillowy heft, absorbing and lulling and cocooning Crowley.

‘ ‘s nice,’ he admits, nuzzling the underside of Aziraphale’s chin.

Aziraphale shivers a little, which Crowley registers as a delightful subterranean vibration. ‘Nice?,’ he says, and if Crowley had his guard up as he should, he’d watch out for the careful nonchalance of his tone.

As it is, he’s a little too distracted by the soft husk of Aziraphale’s voice, of one hand moving gently through his hair and the other tracing light circles on his outer thigh, creeping higher and higher up from his knee.

‘Mmmmmmmm,’ he says, holding his breath. The hand finally broaches the real estate occupied by Crowley’s arse[](f2pr5)[5], and Crowley lets out his breath in a whoosh.

Aziraphale’s hand spreads lovingly over Crowley’s buttock. ‘Darling,’ and Crowley tenses, but Aziraphale says nothing more, instead stroking in delicate, barely-there touches.

Crowley relaxes, nestling deeper against Aziraphale, whose touch becomes firmer, more demanding. His hand moves in larger concentric sweeps along Crowley’s arse, down to his thigh, drawing luxuriantly up to the small of his back.

‘Shall we,’ Aziraphale murmurs in Crowley’s ear, ‘shall we take these off?’

Crowley’s eyes open and tick down. Aziraphale has a hand on the waistband of Crowley’s jeans. His other hand is still scratching gently at the nape of Crowley’s neck.

‘Oh,’ says Crowley, after a not-inconsiderable pause. ‘Yes. Those. All right.’

He shimmies out of his jeans – he’s not sure he has the wherewithal for a miracle – and watches Aziraphale’s eyes darken as he writhes in his lap. Then Aziraphale takes care of the final mile, pulling Crowley’s jeans off with what Crowley is almost certain is an unnecessary amount of touching, except he shivers delightedly each time that large soft palm rests on his ankle or calf or thigh.

And then Aziraphale’s hand is on his naked arse, and Crowley cannot help the sound he makes.

‘Oh,’ sighs Aziraphale, his breath ruffling Crowley’s hair. He presses the heel of his palm into the flesh of Crowley’s arse, kneads and strokes it with evident relish. He turns his hand so that the tips of his fingers brush the crease where Crowley’s buttock meets his thigh. A little pressure, and his hand is covering Crowley’s cheek, warm and heavy and possessive. Crowley gasps into Aziraphale’s neck.

‘Do you like that?,’ asks Aziraphale. There’s no coquetry in the question. Crowley nods, fervently, arches into the touch.

‘You have freckles,’ says Aziraphale softly. ‘On your nose.’

Crowley shrugs.

‘On your thighs too.’

Crowley raises his head. ‘Do you not like them?’

If ever there were a use for a miracle…

‘I like them very much,’ says Aziraphale. He tilts Crowley’s head for a kiss, saying against his mouth ‘I find them…’ another kiss, ‘…particularly…’ and another kiss ‘…charming.’

And Crowley, swaying forward to meet Aziraphale’s lips, almost – but almost – misses the word.

Almost.

But not quite.

Sinking like a coin through molasses, the word reaches him and there – there it is. He jerks in Aziraphale’s lap, gasping and hissing.

‘Oh,’ says Aziraphale. ‘oh, what a shame. I really thought that might work.’

Crowley glares at him. He freely admits the gesture might have more weight if he wasn’t still pressing into Aziraphale’s hand, still stroking his arse.

‘Training?’ is what he manages, at length. Aziraphale nods, completely and utterly unabashed.

‘ ‘Charming’ is such a small thing,’ he says. ‘The merest bagatelle, I would have thought, but your …sensitivities, my dear … they’re graver than I thought.’

‘My _sensitivities_?’

Aziraphale purses his lips. ‘I must reassess,’ he says.

‘Reassess?,’ says Crowley, sitting up. ‘ _Reassess_? What you must _reassssssesssss_ , angel, is – is the – the - ’

‘Compliments?,’ says Aziraphale, when Crowley seems to run out of steam.

‘Sssssap,’ says Crowley emphatically. ‘Schmaltz. I don’t need it.’

‘You do!,’ says Aziraphale.

‘I don’t!,’ says Crowley.

‘Well, in any case,’ says Aziraphale, ‘you _deserve_ it.’

‘I don’t,’ says Crowley.

The hand in his hair tightens painfully. His head is forced back as Aziraphale stares at him. ‘You do.’

Crowley swallows. Aziraphale’s eyes are blazing.

‘That’s not,’ he begins, and regroups. ‘How is that even remotely the _point_?’

Aziraphale looks at him for a long moment and Crowley thinks – heart sinking – that he can feel the words ‘I forgive you’ form on his lips. Until he sighs and bends forward to kiss Crowley’s forehead.

‘Never mind,’ he says.

Crowley almost believes this means he’s going to let the matter drop.

Almost.

* * *

The next time, they’re holding hands on the way back from afternoon tea at the Corinthia. Aziraphale is fumbling for the keys to the bookshop, and Crowley – with a glance over his shoulder to make sure they’re unobserved – gestures at the lock.

‘Thank you, my dear,’ says Aziraphale, with the extravagant gratitude of an ethereal being who has polished off some really excellent Scottish salmon and a platter of the most prodigally fluffy scones this side of Heaven[](f2pr6)[6].

‘Chivalry’s not dead,’ grins Crowley. He thinks if he says it himself it counts as vanity, which is still firmly within his bailiwick.

‘No indeed,’ says Aziraphale, with an arch glance over his shoulder. ‘And I’ve always relied on the kindness of strangers.’

And there it is, Crowley flinching away with his whole body as his trousers become uncomfortably tight.

‘Oh, now, this is getting _absurd_ ,’ says Aziraphale. Crowley manages a glare, no less withering for being levelled through sudden tears.

‘I was _quoting_ ,’ says Aziraphale, handing Crowley a neatly-pressed handkerchief. ‘Am I not even allowed to make the most glancing of references to your - ’

Crowley desperately lunges forward and kisses Aziraphale. He has no idea what he was going to say next, but experience has taught him he doesn’t want[](f2pr7)[7] to find out.

‘Yes,’ says Aziraphale, breathlessly, but still managing a very creditably pettish sniff. ‘Well.’

* * *

The next time, Crowley is biting the underside of Aziraphale’s jaw, one leg thrown over both of Aziraphale’s. Crowley’s shirt is untucked, pushed up by one peremptory angelic hand. Said hand is drawing wide hot circles against the small of Crowley’s back, while the other is gripping Crowley’s thigh.

‘Mmmmm – oh,’ says Aziraphale, as Crowley’s teeth sink in. ‘Oh, _goodness_ , my darling.’

Crowley licks the mark left by his teeth, relishing Aziraphale’s shudder. ‘My dear,’ breathes Aziraphale, ‘you really are - ’

Crowley surges up to kiss him. It’s an effective expedient to shut him up, which is obviously the only reason Crowley resorts to it quite so often.

‘I wanted to say – mmph!’

It’s a long kiss, long and slow and dirty, teeth and tongue and heat. When Crowley pulls away, they can neither of them manage to open their eyes all the way and they have both, quite spontaneously, been Making A Pretty Big Effort.

An effort that generates the most pleasing friction when Crowley moves tentatively against it. Almost as pleasing as the lovely shocked-sounding gasp Aziraphale makes.

‘Darling,’ he says, hand sweeping and stroking and circling against Crowley’s back, ‘darling, you’re –‘

Oh for hell’s _sake_. Crowley cannot forbear entirely from rolling his eyes as he licks, deliberately, across Aziraphale’s lips.

‘Mmmmmmmmm,’ says Aziraphale, pulling Crowley closer, ‘and _as I was saying_ \- ’

Crowley groans once and rolls Aziraphale onto his back. One thigh between Aziraphale’s, swallowing those little murmurs into his mouth and humming approvingly as they turn into longer and deeper moans, wriggling as the hand on his back traces delicate shapes seemingly at random…

Hang on a minute.

Those shapes … aren’t so random, are they?

That – that’s an ‘L’. A looping, swirling lower-case ‘l’.

Then an O.

Then a – that’s a V.

And Crowley would bet a considerable fortune the next letter is – yep, that’s an E.

‘Angel,’ says Crowley, with what he thinks is quite commendable calm, ‘anything you want to tell me?’

There is a rictus of a strained brightness on Aziraphale’s lips and he seems to have difficulty meeting Crowley’s eyes.

‘Yes, dear boy?’ he says, with the sort of nonchalance most typically sported by three small boys in a trenchcoat who have bought tickets for an R-rated film. Crowley thinks, given half a chance, he’d be trying to whistle.

‘If I didn’t know better, angel,’ says Crowley, ‘I’d think that you were trying to spell out the word ‘lovely’ on my back.’

‘Whaaaaaaat?’ says Aziraphale, opening his eyes impossibly wide. ‘Spelling out? On your back?’ He titters. ‘Oh, oh that’s awfully good, spelling out indeed, my word.’

‘Not your word,’ says Crowley, ‘A word. Specifically, lovely. L – O – V – E – L – Y.’

‘Was I spelling that out?’ Aziraphale seems charmed. ‘What a delightful coincidence, She really does move - ’

‘- In mysterious ways, I know, angel,’ says Crowley, ‘and so do you. Though, I mean,’ and he doesn’t want to rub it in, but Aziraphale does need to learn, ‘not _that_ mysterious.’

Aziraphale is the very picture of wounded innocence for all of five seconds before he crumples. ‘Oh all right,’ he says, ‘it was worth a try.’

‘You need a more recent book,’ says Crowley, ‘Tacitus was quite a long while ago.’

‘Classics endure, my dear,’ says Aziraphale, ‘I found it quite useful.’

‘As a training manual?’ says Crowley. ‘Because let me remind you - ’

‘Oh no,’ says Aziraphale. ‘As a decoy.’

‘A – a decoy for _what_?’

‘I had a magician’s manual hidden inside it,’ says Aziraphale, beaming.

‘Oh, for - ’

‘Misdirection, dear boy,’ says Aziraphale, beaming. ‘The absolute key to prestidigitation with aplomb!’

Crowley can feel a headache begin between his eyebrows. ‘You thought,’ he says, ‘that the key … to our sex life … lay in … your magic career.’

Aziraphale simpers coyly. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘career is a rather grand term for my humble talents in the noble art, but - ’

‘Yes,’ says Crowley, because he would do anything for love but – in all deference to Meatloaf – he wouldn’t do that, ‘career is a grand term. And your talents are. Humble.’ He barrels over Aziraphale’s outraged sniff to say ‘Once again, angel, you wanted to fix our sex life with your conjuring.’ He pauses, because he doesn’t want to be cruel, but it does bear repeating: ‘Your conjuring. _Yours_.’

‘I believe,’ says Aziraphale, breathing ice from every word, ‘that you’ve made your point.’

‘ _Have_ I?’

‘Hmph,’ says Aziraphale.

‘And hang on,’ says Crowley, ‘misdirection? What sort of misdirection?’

Aziraphale is clearly torn between indulging in a mild-to-moderate sulk and showing off his grand stratagem to Crowley. No bookie would take bets on the outcome, and their intuition is richly confirmed when Aziraphale unbends ten seconds later.

‘You see,’ he says confidingly, ‘I knew you’d try to stop me saying things to you. By any means necessary.’

‘I mean,’ says Crowley, guiltily aware that he’s only ever tried one means.

‘And so long as you were bent on foiling my _speech_ , dearest, you rather left your flanks unguarded. As it were.’

Crowley says ‘So you did make use of the Tacitus as well. The ... military strategy.’

Aziraphale dimples. ‘I may have.’

‘Still,’ says Crowley, ‘I found out in the end.’

‘You did,’ says Aziraphale, giving him an approving pat on his arse. ‘For that sentence, at least.’

It takes Crowley a moment before he recoils. ‘That – angel, how many were there?’

Aziraphale smiles serenely.

‘What else did you call me, Aziraphale?’

Aziraphale hums and lifts his face for a kiss.

* * *

The next time, Crowley is face-down and gasping ‘Please, please, please’ into the pillow as Aziraphale drags his tongue in leisurely strokes up and down his cleft. He rocks against that sweet teasing pressure, at the warm slick wetness flitting in light patterns across his …

Wait a minute.

‘Angel,’ he says.

‘Hmmmm?,’ says Aziraphale, pressing a kiss to Crowley’s hole.

‘Nggghhh – no, no, that’s – what are you spelling, angel?’

‘Spelling?’ says Aziraphale, in the tone of one who has never heard of the concept of orthography, or indeed language, but is interested in your views and wishes to subscribe to your newsletter, or would if he knew what a newsletter was or indeed how to read.

‘Angel.’

‘Oh all right,’ says Aziraphale, and bends his head again. The messy screaming demonic orgasm that follows goes entirely unpraised. Unless Aziraphale’s own frantic grab for Crowley as he rubs himself off against him counts as praise[](f2pr8)[8].

* * *

‘That’s French, Aziraphale. You can’t get away with licking sonnets into my skin just because they’re in French!’

‘I’ll have you know,’ says Aziraphale with dignity, ‘that those were alexandrines.’

‘Whatever they were, ssstop it.’

‘I’d nearly finished, too.’

‘ _Aziraphale_.’

‘Oh, very well.’

‘ _Thank_ you.’

‘Would you like me to use my hand, darling?’

‘Does that mean you’ll use your mouth?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘No, I meant - ’

‘I know what you meant, dear boy.’

‘And …?’

‘Oh, _yes_.’

* * *

‘ _Vir_ , that – that’s Sanskrit. You called me – nnnggghhh – brave, that’s brave.’

‘So it was,’ says Aziraphale. ‘Well spotted.’ He kisses Crowley enthusiastically, licking Crowley’s come into his mouth.

* * *

‘Was that – was that Pashto?’

‘Well _done_ , dear boy.’

* * *

Aziraphale is rubbing his chin and looking somewhat resentfully at Crowley.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ says Crowley, for what feels like the hundredth time. ‘If you’d asked me, I’d have warned you against calling me exquisite in Akkadian with my cock in your mouth. You should have known I’d flinch.’

‘I was prepared for flinching,’ says Aziraphale with some asperity, ‘but your knee’s never done _that_ before.’

‘I’m sorry,’ says Crowley, and he means it, but the regret’s battling the all-over contentment of a truly world-class orgasm.

And Aziraphale, too, seems to find it hard to hold on to a sense of grievance and preen simultaneously[](f2pr9)[9].

‘Yes,’ he says, ‘well.’

* * *

After that, Aziraphale seems to give up on any attempts at subtlety. He has Crowley pinned, both wrists encircled in one pale hand, his thighs holding Crowley firmly in place. Crowley’s shirt is off and his trousers unbuttoned, and Aziraphale is sucking a series of kisses down Crowley’s heaving chest. When Aziraphale lifts his head, his eyes are wild. He passes his tongue over his lips – swollen, now, and wet – and says ‘Do you know how - ’

Crowley acts. A blink, and he’s uncoiling, the dim light glancing off his oily black skin. His scales gleam green and blue. There are eight feet of him, winding sinuously around his angel.

  1. Around his mouth, first. That’s important. The mouth that can sing and quote and kiss and lick and bite words of praise, that’s got to be immobilised.
  2. Around his torso, binding his arms to his sides. Hands can stroke and gesture, fingers can trace Arabic, or Italian, or Devanagiri, or Cantonese. Take those out of the equation too.



Around his cock, then. Draping and coiling, sheathing that lovely pulsing heat in his own undulating silken grasp[](f2pr10)[10]. Then down between his legs, looping delicately around his bollocks.

Crowley’s tongue flicks out, tasting the air. He tightens a little around Aziraphale’s cock, enjoying its convulsive twitch, the drool of pre-ejaculate on his scales. He lets his scales shift, he lets himself slither and loop and realign and tighten again around Aziraphale’s cock. He absorbs Aziraphale’s wet gasp against his skin. He lets himself ripple faster and faster along Aziraphale’s length until he spends, keening softly. He allows himself a triumphant little hiss.

There’s a movement. Crowley pulls his coils tighter around Aziraphale’s mouth and hands as a precaution, but there doesn’t seem to be any resistance there.

A long scrape of Aziraphale’s foot, followed by three short taps. Then one tap.

Crowley darts his head down. When he rears back up, Aziraphale is staring at him, eyebrow raised.

One tap. One long scrape.

Crowley freezes.

Tap. Tap. Scrape.

Scrape.

Crowley convulses. He collapses back into his human form, curled up in Aziraphale’s arms and giggling.

‘Morse code?,’ he gasps at length. ‘ _Morse_?’

‘Perseverance is a virtue,’ says Aziraphale, his eyes nearly disappearing as he smiles. He puts Crowley back on his feet and sinks down to his knees until he’s eye level with Crowley’s cock. He looks up at Crowley and licks his lips.

‘You’re not going to use Morse Code on my cock, are you?,’ says Crowley, in a tone of mild interest.

‘No, dearest,’ says Aziraphale. ‘Not Morse Code.’

Crowley sighs and lets his head thump back. The wet inviting heat of Aziraphale’s mouth makes him hiss, and it’s hard to be watchful in the face of his angel’s profligate, reverent hunger. Aziraphale kisses and licks and sucks, soft filthy caresses with his tongue probing at his slit, sliding on and off him with voluptuous abandon and gloriously, unabashedly, unnecessarily obscene sounds, lapping delicately at the underside of his cock, running sweeping arabesques and curlicues around his bollocks, swallowing around him with naked greed when Crowley spills, long and hard.

They’re curled up around each other when Crowley asks ‘What language was that?’

‘Hmmmmm?’

Crowley levers himself up on his elbow to direct a muzzy glare at Aziraphale. ‘The licking, Aziraphale. I know – I know it was something.’

‘Do you?,’ says Aziraphale. ‘You didn’t say anything at the time.’

‘I wanted to get off,’ says Crowley.

‘ _Ah_ ,’ says Aziraphale, with an immediate access of a deeply sinister delight. ‘Is that all it took? I’ll try that next time.’

Crowley shivers. ‘No,’ he says, with more firmness than he feels. Aziraphale’s little glance up at him shows he’s unconvinced. _Shit_. ‘The language. What was it?’

‘Nahuatl dialect,’ says Aziraphale. ‘I learned it from a tribesman fighting for independence from Maxtla.’

‘I’ve never heard it.’

‘You wouldn’t have,’ says Aziraphale. ‘They were wiped out by Cortes’ armies.’

‘Hmmmm. Were the conquistadors ours or yours?’

‘Difficult to say,’ allows Aziraphale at length. He snuggles into Crowley. ‘It was a beautiful language.’

‘Will you teach it to me?’

Aziraphale raises his head and looks deeply into Crowley’s eyes. ‘No, love. Never.

‘Fair enough.’

* * *

Afterwards, they’re sleeping. Well, Crowley is sleeping. Aziraphale remains slightly perplexed by the concept of voluntary unconsciousness but is extremely open to the aesthetics of recumbence, soft pillows, high-threadcount sheets and being the big spoon to Crowley’s little spoon.

Aziraphale has an arm slung around Crowley’s waist, his hand spread over his belly. Crowley feels unmoored in the most delightful way, nestled in a cloud guided by breezes that belong only to dappled sunlit picnics and unexpectedly wonderful first kisses.

‘Crowley?’ comes a soft voice at his ear. ‘Crowley, are you awake?’

Crowley slows his breathing. He allows himself one grumpy twitch, eyes closed.

‘No, of course not,’ says Aziraphale, softly still but with a smile in his voice. ‘You wily old serpent.’

Crowley fights back a smile.

Aziraphale presses in closer to Crowley, lips against the nape of his neck, and draws up the hand on his belly slowly.

‘Wicked,’ say the fingertips on Crowley’s chest in Urdu. ‘Naughty,’ whisper the lips on his neck in Aramaic. ‘Foul,’ say the fingertips in Sumerian, and ‘fiend’, they say in High Brittonic.

And finally, all in capitals, the simple declaration: M I N E.

[1] The Egyptians. The Mesopotamians. Torquemada. Thomas More, even. Now there were people with a flair for cruelty. Who had craft and zeal and panache. The Romans? Tedious bellowing frat-boys. Pull this, stretch this. Bring in bigger and bigger animals. Starve them. Then shove them in front of crowds. Starve _them_. So _dreary_. Where was the style? Where was the subtlety? Where was the vision? Where was the pride in a job well done?

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[2] That tight little array of curls. Like a Regency _coiffeuse_ with clinical depression. What was he _thinking_?

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[3] Not that Crowley’s ever been anything other than an interested observer of the art of the orgy. In the great writhing heaving smorgasbord of orgies, routs and Bacchanaliae, Crowley’s role is that of the unusually well-dressed undercover critic for the _Guide Michelin_.

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[4] And into whose personal politics it is really best not to enquire.

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[5] Not that there’s much of it.

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[6] Not that Heaven has any time for sconesa, of course.

a Or clotted creamb.

b Or gross matter of any descriptionc.

c And Heaven would certainly consider clotted cream to be very grossd.

d And not to mattere.

e Which is one of the many thingsf about which Heaven is mistaken.

f And by no means the least important.

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[7] Well, he _does_ a.

a And also he doesn’tb.

b It’s complicatedc, all right?

c Look, if the chronicler hasn’t painted you an adequate picture of the essential tension at the heart of Crowley’s response to praise, that is her faultd and she begs your pardon most abjectly.

d Although, I mean – _is_ it her fault?

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[8] Which it does, but Crowley’s particular sensitivities are – thankfully – entirely semantic, and so on this one occasion leave him mercifully alone.

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[9] Though he gives it a jolly good try.

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[10] It is not immediately obvious how Aziraphale could use his cock to spell out laudatory phrasesa to Crowley, but it’s as well to be prepared.

a Well, he has some ideas, but they all require a level of muscular control that he doubts Aziraphale cares to acquireb.

b Though he’s been wrong before.

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The word Aziraphale is tapping out is 'beautiful'. Or it ought to be, at any rate.
> 
> This chapter was going to be veeeerrrry different until a remark from the fabulous and talented [Ark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ark/) got me thinking about Morse code. And then what was going to be a fairly straightforward 'Aziraphale pins Crowley down and relentlessly praises him until he comes all over himself, weeping and exhilarated'... turned ... into ... this.
> 
> Also, if you can navigate the footnotes at all, thank the unerringly fabulous [triedunture](https://archiveofourown.org/users/triedunture/pseuds/triedunture)

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr handle is [itsevidentvery](https://itsevidentvery.tumblr.com/) if you'd like to come yell with me there.
> 
> A handy-dandy rebloggable link for this fic is [here](https://itsevidentvery.tumblr.com/post/615235075730178048/for-i-am-fearfully-and-wonderfully-made) if you are so inclined.


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